Beer Quarry Caves

Roman Quarry Caves

Useful Information

Adults £ 4.25, Senior Citizens £ 3.25, Children (5-16) £ 3.25, Children (-5) free, Family (2+2) £10.50.
Children under 12 must be accompanied by an adult in the ratio of one adult to a maximum of 8 children.
[2002]

As far as we know this information was accurate when it was published (see years in brackets), but may have changed since then.Please check rates and details directly with the companies in question if you need more recent info.

Last update:

$Date: 2015/08/30 21:55:07 $

History

1984

opened to the public.

Description

Beer Quarry Caves, named after the nearby town Beer, are a very
old quarry, which provided stones for the Tower of London, Windsor
Castle, Westminster Abbey and 24 cathedrals, including those at
Exeter, Wells and Winchester.
This stone is an oolitic limestone of very good quality.

Beer Quarry Caves is regularly used as a hibernation site by small numbers of
Bechstein's bats (Myotis bechsteinii).
This bat is one of the rarest mammals in Britain, recorded from only a small
number of sites.
And there is an important assemblage of other species too.

The first quarries at this point date back to Roman times.
That is why the caves are sometimes called Roman Quarry Caves.

But the first mining in Beer took place much earlier in the stone age.
Early man in the Mesolithic, and much more in the Neolithic, was looking for the
black flint he needed to make his tools.
This flint is found in lines, looking similar to sedimentary layers, in the
unlayered white Cretacous chalk of southern Britain.
But Beer is the most western outcrop of this formation, so the flint was mined
and traded to the west.